Nvidia announced that it has resolved a design flaw in its next-generation Blackwell chips, which had caused production delays.
A flaw in the B200 chips processor die was uncovered by the manufacturer TSMC in early August, which forced Nvidia to rework the design before the hardware could move on to mass production.
The issue has been resolved, as CFO Colette Kress told investors on the company’s recent earnings call that it had “executed a change” that will improve production yields.
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The issue was expected to force some shipments expected at the end of the year to 2025, however, Kress said a ramp-up of production “is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter.”
Nvidia’s CFO said demand for its next-generation GPU has been “well above supply” and the company expects such demand to continue into 2025.
The likes of Google, Microsoft and Meta are among the big-name companies in line to purchase the new chips, which can run AI models at 25 times lower costs than previous Nvidia H100 hardware.
Blackwell doesn’t mean the end of the Hopper line of GPUs though, as Nvidia plans to continue offering H-series GPUs well into next year, offering it has a stopgap solution.
Kress informed investors that the supply and availability of Hopper GPUs have improved, and shipments are expected to increase in the second half of the fiscal year 2025.
“Hopper demand is strong, and Blackwell is widely sampling,” Kress said. “Customers continue to accelerate their Hopper architecture purchases while gearing up to adopt Blackwell.”
Unveiled at GTC 2024 back in March, the Blackwell line of GPUs supports double the compute and AI model sizes compared to the prior H100s.
AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure are among the cloud service providers to initially offer Blackwell-powered instances.
In 2026, Blackwell GPUs will be replaced by Rubin GPUs, with an updated version of Blackwell expected to launch a year later.
Nvidia has shifted its business model to what CEO Jensen Huang described at this year's Computex conference as a "one-year rhythm," planning to release a powerful new GPU every year.
Also on the earnings call, Nvidia reported a 122% annual revenue increase during the quarter, while its net income rose to $16.6 billion.
That didn’t stop the company’s share price from slipping by almost 7%, however. The report failed to meet investor’s lofty expectations for the company, having reported three straight periods of year-on-year growth in excess of 200%.
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